Flood of frustration

Thursday

Jul 24, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Five years after officials began writing a comprehensive billion-dollar flood protection plan for Stockton, the federal government said this week it will miss a December target to complete the document.

Alex Breitler

Five years after officials began writing a comprehensive billion-dollar flood protection plan for Stockton, the federal government said this week it will miss a December target to complete the document.

Compared to the old days, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may still be able to finish the plan in relatively short order.

But the delay of perhaps six months frustrates local flood-control officials, who need the Corps' blessing to qualify for state and federal funding, and who also face regulatory deadlines that could stifle future development in the city.

And yes - despite the drought, the floods will come again someday. And Stockton must be ready for them.

George Hartmann, a member of the county's Advisory Water Commission and an attorney who represents Delta farmers, blasted the Corps at a commission meeting last week.

"We're being had, and it's not just here, it's everywhere," Hartmann said. "They (the Corps) are not getting anywhere. It's obscene and absurd. And we're the victims of this - all of us."

The plan began in 2009 and originally was not supposed to be finished until 2017.

But two years ago, the Corps launched a nationwide effort to speed up its notoriously lengthy review process. At the time, 68 Corps studies had been ongoing for more than a decade.

Dubbed "3-by-3-by-3," the new effort is supposed to ensure that studies take no more than three years to complete, cost no more than $3 million and that the reports themselves are no more than 3 inches thick.

The Stockton study is supposed to be one of the first to embrace those principles.

It's already at five years and $10 million. Still, even with the six-month delay, the turnaround should be faster than originally thought, said Chris Gray, a spokesman for the Corps office in Sacramento.

"We're still working through some growing pains trying to do this kind of study more quickly," he said.

A draft of the Stockton plan - known formally as the Lower San Joaquin River Feasibility Study - may come out later this summer, Gray said.

The plan will not only be later than expected, but perhaps also less ambitious.

Originally the plan would have included projects all the way up the San Joaquin River from Lathrop to far north Stockton. According to local officials, however, the final plan is expected to be smaller in scope.

In the north, the plan no longer will include levee improvements along Bear Creek because officials could not demonstrate that the benefits would outweigh the cost - a basic requirement for the Corps to determine whether the work is feasible.

In the south, a long-proposed "relief valve" at Paradise Cut, a channel through which San Joaquin flood flows could be diverted away from Stockton, has also been removed from the plan, according to local officials.

And finally, the Corps has reportedly backed off improvements along the Reclamation District 17 levee stretching from Lathrop to south Stockton, arguing that improving that levee could encourage even more development in the flood plain, contrary to a Corps national policy.

Local officials fought against that position, pointing out that thousands of people already rely on the levee, which also protects Interstate 5, the San Joaquin County Jail, San Joaquin General Hospital, schools and fire stations.

Gray said that even if these projects aren't part of the draft plan later this summer, that doesn't mean they're forever off the table.

Remaining a part of the plan is the proposed flood-control gate near the mouth of Smith Canal, another gate on Fourteen Mile Slough, and the creation of a "western front" - the raising and strengthening of levees running along Stockton's western fringe, past Brookside and Lincoln Village West as far north as Mosher Slough.

That's according to Jim Giottonini, executive director of the San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency.

The ultimate goal: 200-year flood protection for Stockton, or protection from floods that have a 0.5 percent chance of happening any given year.

Not only is the work important to keeping Stockton high and dry, but it would help satisfy a 2007 state law requiring cities to plan for 200-year protection.

Any delay might be costly:

» Cities are supposed to achieve 200-year protection by 2025, which isn't as far away as it sounds. Failing to meet the law could severely restrict development.

» State money may be available, but funds from a voter-approved flood-control bond must be fully distributed by 2016. And the state generally wants Corps approval before dishing out the dough for large projects. This could hamper progress on the Smith Canal gate, upon which thousands of Stockton homeowners are relying to escape the flood zone and rid themselves of mandatory flood insurance.

» Even with the blessing of the Corps, it's another battle entirely to earn federal money to help pay the billion-dollar tab. Some of the cost, ultimately, is likely to come down on property owners, Giottonini said.

So, there is a certain level of urgency to getting the Corps study done.

Giottonini said he's heard similar concerns about the slowly grinding bureaucracy from other particularly flood-prone parts of the country.

"The people are good and skilled at the Corps," Giottonini said. "I think they have good intentions. But they're doing a new process and they're learning."

"The people having to deal with them are frustrated a little bit," he added, "but I'd imagine the Corps people working on these studies are frustrated, too."

Hartmann's comments last week were more cynical - certainly when it came to Corps' compliance with the new goal of 3-inch-thick reports.

"If you stacked all the paper they've generated from floor to ceiling you'd be 18 feet over 3 inches," Hartmann said. "It's just ridiculous."

Contact reporter Alex Breitler at (209) 546-8295 or abreitler@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/breitlerblog and on Twitter @alexbreitler.